ĐÁNH GIÁ ASUS ZENFONE 4 MAX ZC520KL

asus just announced its Zenfone 4 family of devices a couple of months ago, creating a convoluted and confusing portfolio. To kick things off, we have the Zenfone 4 Max on the lower over of the group. For $199, you get budget-level specs, except for the massive 5,000mAh battery. Besides it just being large và providing a lot of life, the Zenfone 4 Max"s battery can also charge other devices. Cool, right?

That"s about where the positives end. I have no problem with low-tier hardware because I"ve seen it put to lớn good use, but when you slap a very heavy "skin" on đứng top of Android, you"re bound to lớn run into some issues. That"s exactly what happened with the Zenfone 4 Max: Asus" ZenUI mars the experience and usability of the phone. The "premium" build quality of the device is suspect at best và I have lớn question some of the decisions that asus made with the Zenfone 4 Max.

SPECS

THE GOOD

Battery life

With such a huge battery, this is pretty obvious. This phone is very difficult khổng lồ kill, usually netting me roughly two và a half days of use on a single charge. Bạn đang xem: Đánh giá asus zenfone 4 max zc520kl

THE NOT SO GOOD

Software	This the older, clunkier version of ZenUI that"s just hideous. At least Nougat 7.1.1 is running under it all.
Navigation	While I dislike capacitive keys, these really irritate me. Instead of being backlit, they"re just reflective. Useless at night. Xem thêm: 109+ Mẫu Card Visit Đẹp: Tổng Hợp Và Phân Loại Các Mẫu Card Visit Đẹp Và Độc Đáo
Performance	The Snapdragon 430 does not handle this heavy-handed version of ZenUI well. Plenty of stutter and lag.
MicroUSB	Come on, this late in 2017? A minor thing, yes, but still an annoyance.
Build quality	The phone creaks và cracks when even slightly flexed (like in a pocket). I am suspicious of its long-term durability.

asus has certainly improved its smartphone design in the last year or so. The Zenfone 4 Max is the Taiwanese company"s attempt to bring "premium-ness," both in design & build quality, to a budget phone. The end result is shy of success, thanks to a few stumbles & strange areas.

Let"s start with the design. From the front, the Zenfone 4 Max looks like pretty much every asus phone we"ve seen in the last while: thick bezels, capacitive navigation keys, & a trang chủ button that doubles as the fingerprint sensor. With such a massive focus on photography, asus decided khổng lồ put in a single-LED selfie flash in the right corner of the top bezel. The 8MP front camera isn"t too far from it. While we"re here, let"s talk about one extremely strange thiết kế choice. Asus is a huge fan of capacitive navigation keys. Even though I don"t like them, the back và recents buttons on the Zenfone 4 Max don"t light up. Yeah, that"s right, the reflective coating is supposed to lớn act like a backlight here. Spoiler: it absolutely fails at that. Of all the hardware decisions on this phone, this one is probably the dumbest.

Flipping the phone over, the unassuming back of the device bears some resemblance to lớn the OnePlus 5 with the dual-camera module hugging the đứng đầu left corner and the asus logo right where your index finger comes to lớn rest. In short, the ZenFone 4 Max is rather boring in its appearance, which isn"t necessarily a bad thing. The phone is mostly metal, save for the plastic bands that cover the top và bottom edges of the device. The whole phone itself does not feel well-constructed, however; instead, it creaks và cracks with even the slightest flex, such as when I put it in my jeans pocket và sat down. The front glass looked lượt thích it was starting khổng lồ separate from the main toàn thân of the phone, something I"ve experienced with other asus devices as they age. In short, the construction is a very sore point for the Zenfone 4 Max, disappointingly so.

Thanks to the huge 5,000mAh battery, this is one chunky phone. It"s thick và heavy, which wears on your wrist after using it for extended periods of time. The glass on the front stops at each side of the phone with a sharp drop-off, meaning your fingers just fly off if you swipe hard enough. It"s a jarring thing at first, especially after using phones where the glass either meets the frame smoothly or curves off down the edge.

In all, the Zenfone 4 Max is just boring. There"s nothing exciting about its thiết kế or anything. For a phone in this price range, I cannot fault it for failing khổng lồ impress — that"s just the nature of the beast.

At 5.5" diagonally, the IPS LCD display is... Tolerable. It sits at a less-than-ideal 720p resolution (not surprising), meaning that pixels are stretched pretty thin. The entire UI looks like the magnification is set to the fullest extent possible which, when combined with this version of ZenUI, makes the entire user interface feel cartoonish. While I, being a person with thick fingers, appreciate large cảm biến targets, this goes a bit too far.

In general, however, the display isn"t too bad. Like most of the Zenfone 4 Max, it"s plain and functional. Colors are okay, but they"re rather washed out & paler than they should be. On my reviews unit, ZenUI prohibits me from using Asus" màu sắc adjustments, including the "Super Vivid" và blue light filter modes, for some reason that I cannot fathom. Brightness was also in the "just fine" territory, but the viewing angles were excellent.

Performance và battery life

At $199, you shouldn"t expect beastly performance out of this phone. The Snapdragon 430 is a decent SoC, but I found several instances of lag & stutter when using the Zenfone 4 Max. ZenUI really bogs this thing down sometimes, khổng lồ the point where it takes several seconds to xuất hiện an app, go back khổng lồ the home screen, or even answer a call.

For the majority of my time with the Zenfone 4 Max, I was pretty disappointed with the overall performance. Those lags and stutters happened often enough khổng lồ stick in my mind. One or two every now and again is fine, but several in the span of a few hours becomes frustrating. And, of course, this being a budget phone, there are plenty of RAM-conserving issues khổng lồ be found, too, though hãng asus isn"t as bad about this as other OEMs like Xiaomi or Huawei. Still, 3GB is plenty enough, which is why I find myself annoyed lớn see such strict memory regulation.

The battery life is where this phone shines. The 5,000mAh cell goes forever... Well, not really, but you know what I mean. I took the phone off the charger one morning with the battery at 100% và didn"t plug it in again until two days later. Bear in mind that I was using this phone regularly, so color me impressed. On idle standby, the battery life is even better.

One other interesting feature is reverse charging, i.e. The Zenfone 4 Max can act as an external battery back for your other devices. That"s pretty neat and hãng asus even includes a compatible cable— it"s just a male microUSB khổng lồ female USB-A dongle. I like to see this sort of thing và I used it while I was simultaneously testing another hãng asus phone. It came in handy, for sure.

The camera performance is where hãng asus has firmly placed its focus (heh) for this phone. Without a doubt, you can eek out some decent photos in the right lighting conditions, especially given the price point. On the back, the dual setup is comprised of a 13MP main shooter & a 5MP 120° wide-angle lens. Like I said earlier, you get 8MP on the front with a single LED flash.

What this phone puts out will never come close to lớn what you"ll see in the higher-end spectrum of điện thoại cảm ứng photography, obviously, but image unique is decent on its own merit. With proper lighting, photos have accurate colors, good white balance, and above-average sharpness. Detail is definitely good enough for social media, especially Instagram, which is what hãng asus seems to be aiming for.

Low-light is, understandably, hit or miss; however, my results ended up being much better than I expected. There"s still plenty of noise, but I"ve seen far worse in recent months. My biggest problem, though, is with the autofocus— it"shorribly slow, inaccurate, và more annoying than helpful. Dynamic range is also disappointing, but using HDR helps in many cases. The main camera is not without its flaws, but I respect what hãng asus managed to lớn squeeze out of it given the budget price of the phone.

I vị not typically use front cameras more than once a month, but since the selfie trò chơi is where hãng asus wants the Zenfone 4 Max to succeed, I think it"s appropriate to talk about it. In short, it"s pretty terrible. The flash is less than useless; it actually makes the photos worse. In every one I tried, in multiple lighting conditions và environments, the camera took my ruddy complexion and blew it out of proportion (much lượt thích the Beautify feature you see on phones these days). Normally, you wouldn"t catch me ever posting photos like this anywhere, but it"s just part of the job I suppose.